Friday, January 6, 2012

Praying to Cats

Amanda at Pandagon recently had a cute post about why it makes more sense to pray to cats than to gods. I tried to cull out a couple from the list to highlight, but they're all good, so here's her list in its entirety:

Ten Reasons to Pray to Cats Instead of Gods

1) Cats are real.

2) Because of this, cats have a marginally better chance of answering your prayers than gods do. For instance, if you pray specifically for purring or for someone to scratch your furniture, your cats can probably get that done for you. Not much else, of course, but something is better than nothing.

3) As my buddy Ross said, "Plus, the cuddling and the purring. They actually deliver on the promise of temporal comfort." Science proves him right!

4) Cats may pee on your bed, but they're not going to send you to hell for all eternity.

5) You'll be able to see with your own eyes that the cats appreciate your prayers, whereas gods tend to be notoriously silent with the gratitude.

6) Cat offspring. God offspring. 'nuff said.

7) By praying to cats, you run no chance of praying to the same thing at the same time as that putrid douchebag Ross Douthat, who used Hitchens' death to write this horrible sentence: "My hope - for Hitchens, and for all of us, the living and the dead - is that now he finally knows why." The "why" in this case is why Christians believe---Douthat studiously ignores other religions making competing claims with his. But since Christians like Douthat believe that non-believers are going to hell, he basically just wished Hitchens was in hell. Maybe he's too stupid to grasp that, or maybe he thinks that you can sin against his god, but he'll let you in anyway so long as you showed proper contempt for women and Muslims. Who fucking knows? Either way, by praying to cats, you have nothing to do with that kind of mindless cruelty remade into "morality" by public displays of piety.

8) Sure, cats enjoy murdering smaller creatures, but they eventually eat them, making good use of the proteins within. If you pray to gods, you have to believe that they make people suffer for no good reason whatsoever.

9) People who may not like cats or who prefer dogs may argue with you about aiming your prayers at cats, but they're unlikely to start a holy war.

10) Cats have never, as far as I know, been used to rationalize denying women reproductive control of their bodies, trapping women in the domestic sphere, or denying gay people their rights. Unlike many gods conjured by humans, cats have no opinion on what you wear, and certainly won't smite you for going about with your hair or your knees uncovered.

I'm partial to 4, 9 and 10. Oh, and the link to Ultrarunning? I've said it many times here: Ultrarunners as a demographic are more laid back and sensible than the rest of the population at large. Cats are right up our alley as far as deification goes.